South Korea transfers its government-built Nuri rocket to private companyCapitalism in space: South Korea’s space agency KARI has now completed the transfer of its government-built Nuri rocket to the private South Korea company Hanwha Aerospace.
The transfer includes a total of 16,050 technical documents. While some 2 trillion won ($1.45 billion) in public funds was invested in developing the Nuri rocket, the two sides agreed on a technology transfer fee of 24 billion won, based on direct research and development costs. The agreement comes nearly two years and 10 months after Hanwha Aerospace was selected as the preferred negotiator.
Under the contract, Hanwha Aerospace has secured exclusive rights to lead Nuri production until 2032, which coincides with the government’s target for the next-generation Korean launch vehicle. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase is important, as it shows that this transfer is not completely shifting space development and ownership from the government to the private sector. Hanwha is going to operate the rocket, but it does not appear to own it, nor is it clear it will be allowed to market it to others for profit. Furthermore, it is not Hanwha but KARI that will be developing the next-generation rocket, using government funds.
The dominance of the South Korean government is also reflected in the cost, as the article notes that the Nuri rocket costs “per kilogram … about 10 times that of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9.” Like all governments, KARI was not focused on profit in developing Nuri, so it built a rocket uncompetitive in the present launch market.
Still, this deal indicates the South Korean government’s recognition that it must foster a robust private sector aerospace industry if it truly wishes to enter the space age. This deal is thus just a first step.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: South Korea’s space agency KARI has now completed the transfer of its government-built Nuri rocket to the private South Korea company Hanwha Aerospace.
The transfer includes a total of 16,050 technical documents. While some 2 trillion won ($1.45 billion) in public funds was invested in developing the Nuri rocket, the two sides agreed on a technology transfer fee of 24 billion won, based on direct research and development costs. The agreement comes nearly two years and 10 months after Hanwha Aerospace was selected as the preferred negotiator.
Under the contract, Hanwha Aerospace has secured exclusive rights to lead Nuri production until 2032, which coincides with the government’s target for the next-generation Korean launch vehicle. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase is important, as it shows that this transfer is not completely shifting space development and ownership from the government to the private sector. Hanwha is going to operate the rocket, but it does not appear to own it, nor is it clear it will be allowed to market it to others for profit. Furthermore, it is not Hanwha but KARI that will be developing the next-generation rocket, using government funds.
The dominance of the South Korean government is also reflected in the cost, as the article notes that the Nuri rocket costs “per kilogram … about 10 times that of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9.” Like all governments, KARI was not focused on profit in developing Nuri, so it built a rocket uncompetitive in the present launch market.
Still, this deal indicates the South Korean government’s recognition that it must foster a robust private sector aerospace industry if it truly wishes to enter the space age. This deal is thus just a first step.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Deck chairs, Robert.
We can’t have government cooties ruining things.
If a person goes from private sector to public—or vice versa…he doesn’t get dumber or smarter.
If a government decides to fund spaceflight and the private sector won’t–then it is the government program that flies.
People have this religious belief that–somehow–the private sector has all the answers.
When I see a junior league nation like South Korea pull stunts like this–what they are really saying is “our nation is too stingy to fund spaceflight–here, you private guys invest.”
Meanwhile China embarrasses the rest of Asia because they aren’t afraid to spend real money on space. We used to be that bold.
Most of the Chinese spending appears to be in copying SpaceX.
They are doing a little bit of everything. They want mastery of kerolox, methalox, and hydrolox rocketry as a way to increase tribal knowledge for its own sake.
That might be why they haven’t been to the Moon already.
They have no qualms about dropping hypergolic cores on folks…so I am surprised they didn’t get Glushko’s hypergolic equivalent of the Raptor engine (the RD-270) from Russia.
Nine or so of those and they could have had a Moon Rocket decades ago.
Instead, they broadened their technology base.
Jeff Wright,
And the belief that government has all the answers is not religious?
A government that signed its own death warrant a half-century ago with the One Child Policy is no paragon of foresight or long-range thinking as its many apologists in the West fondly imagine. These are the same people – yourself apparently among them – who completely ignore the PRC’s terminal demographics and flat-lining finances when spinning your pipedreams of statist superiority about to be demonstrated.
The PRC space program is better than that of the U.S. gov’t. and that of any other Western gov’t. That is, unfortunately, damning the PRC with faint praise. The PRC is, at least, unembarrassed to flagrantly copy what has been shown to work. That is more than either the Europeans, NASA, the legacy US-based legacy aerospace apparat or even the Japanese have been willing to even try to do.
But the PRC is more likely to collapse than to achieve dominance in space in the coming decade. The regime is built on sand and the tide is coming in.
I never said government had all the answers.
People have this false choice of having next to no government–or having it everywhere.
Most of the PRC’s political types are professional people. Here, it’s a mix of lawyers, businessmen and activists in a screaming contest.
I think China put money towards its brightest, where in the US, money goes to running backs and domed stadiums like what Gene Hallman tried to inflict on Birmingham.
I remember talking to a father whose daughter attended school out on the Left Coast–and how she noted how the school library had nothing but Asians early in the day.
There was some protest or other by the usual suspects–who this time made the mistake of targeting the library–and were thwarted by the kids studying there who shamed them.
It makes me seven different kinds of angry to see how it takes foreigners to appreciate our institutions more than our own youth.
The one thing that unites both Left and Right in America?
Foolishness.
Speaking of protestors…there was a recent commercial where they got some Aeropostale models or whatever–and had them play the role–and one poster read about how they skipped class to teach the professors something.
It was all I could do to not put my fist through the screen. Americans seem United in their love attacking institutions, rather than building them.
Jeff Wright,
“If a government decides to fund spaceflight and the private sector won’t–then it is the government program that flies.”
That sounds right, when said really fast, but in the U.S. the private sector wanted to fund its own spaceflight and launch services from the beginning, but it was government that forbade it. This is different than what you said. The government program flew, because it would not let any other program fly.
“People have this religious belief that–somehow–the private sector has all the answers.”
This is why I think NASA still has a role in spaceflight. If it does not seize this role, then it becomes obsolete as the private sector advances beyond NASA’s knowledge base, and the private sector would have all the answers, and NASA would be asking the questions.
“When I see a junior league nation like South Korea pull stunts like this–what they are really saying is ‘our nation is too stingy to fund spaceflight–here, you private guys invest.’”
We have seen plenty of entrepreneurs start their own launch services or their own spaceflight companies. The expensive part is the whole space program, doing it all. So far, SpaceX has made enough money from launches to afford its own satellite fleet, and Rocket Lab has made enough to expand its services and manufacturing to assist nascent companies with starting and building their own operations.
It may sound like bootstraps, but it is the customers boosting these companies into crowdsurfing mode.
“That might be why they haven’t been to the Moon already.”
I think that Artemis, the N1 rocket, SLS, and Starship have shown that going to the Moon is not easy, even in this stage of the Second Space Age. If water is found on the Moon, then it will become a little easier. If a watery asteroid has to be moved to lunar orbit to supply propellant, then it will be easier after the move, but the move could be a difficult task.
“It makes me seven different kinds of angry to see how it takes foreigners to appreciate our institutions more than our own youth.”
Our own youth, today, may not have been taught how to study or that an education is important. America’s private sector needs smart, educated workforce, and it is having a hard time getting it, these days. Instead, on average, todays American families are fine with participation trophies and self esteem over higher knowledge. No wonder government doesn’t have all the answers and America’s private sector is busy finding them.
“It was all I could do to not put my fist through the screen. Americans seem United in their love attacking institutions, rather than building them.”
Well, that’s the Left for you.